WORDS Olen Bajarias
How does an artist represent the ongoing conflict in eastern Congo — a humanitarian tragedy that has caused the death of over 5 million people since 1998 — in a way that might make even jaded tweens posting snuff film stills on Tumblr blink? Richard Mosse dyed it magenta.
The Enclave is a 40 minute long film installation bodied by fleeting impressions: rebel groups prowling, water either rippled by wind or falling from heights, dancers/amateur wrestling in a communal space fringed by an eager audience, children performing for the camera twinned by camouflaged shadows performing drills.
Lifting out of disused Second World War technology for reconnaissance and surveillance that is sensitive to infrared light, Mosse and his cinematographer Trevor Tweeten render the Congolese landscape alien. It seems to have been bleached of all colour and then stained, so that things once green are now grades of purple and red, achieving a hybrid look between M.I.A.’s baile funk-y music video for Bucky Done Gun and a histological sample in a lab seen through a microscope.
The film is not played in one uninterrupted cut but in fragments, on six double-sided screens suspended in the darkened Gallery II of the RHA. It is a self-consciously handled interpretation of the situation in Congo, eschewing the cautious toe-dipping realism of war photography for an unharnessed imaginative leap into a war zone dotted by shrubs of civilians and armed militia. The screens are so large that something stirring always tugs at the peripheral vision, one never knows where to look, and no one narrative is given importance over the others. Screens whizz alive as abruptly as others shut off, leaving whiplash and calculated kneecapping blows of incomprehension in their wake.
The Enclave is a hopscotch of jagged shards rather than a neat whole that would sit still in pockets without snagging the edges. It represented Ireland last year at the 55th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, and the RHA hosts the exhibition’s first showing in the country.
Richard Mosse’s The Enclave runs until 12 March at the Royal Hibernian Academy
(Image via richardmosse.com)
